Forbidden Love
by Brass Tacked
Summary: Neal's thoughts when the identity of the person he loves is revealed in death. Warning: Slash overtones. Written for The Dancing Dove's SFF Challenge, then forgotten about even to the point of not entering it!


**Disclaimer: **Not mine, except the plot so don't steal it!

**Forbidden Love**

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It just couldn't be true. He couldn't be dead, not him, not my lover. I was still having trouble adjusting to the idea that he had been evil, I just did not want to believe it. He had always been sweet to me and he had never appeared as dirty as he was now.

This man's hair was greasy and hung lankly around his pale face. The hair I remembered had shined with health and fell in graceful waves down to his shoulders. I remembered the feel of those soft locks between my fingers, his silky skin against my own. That skin was now sallow and had an eerie pastiness to it that resided even after death.

No, this wasn't the viral lover I remembered. Thinking about it, the images I remembered had probably been fabricated, illusions carefully crafted to fool me. Now as I looked down at the severed head and blood covered body I thought to myself 'He really is a nothing man.'

I kept careful control of my features as I viewed the mangled carcass, it wouldn't do for the others to see my grief. To them he was Blayce the Gallan, committer of heinous crimes and a heartless bastard. They had not been witness to his soft side, like I had.

I remembered meeting him in the forest soon after our arrival at Haven. I was the one who had informed him of the refugee camp so close to the boarder. We had met periodically over the months, each of the blissful encounters had seemed more joyous than the last.

I know now that he had been using me for information, his dog, Stenmun had probably been watching us at all times. It broke my heart to think that the man I had given my heart to was so callous. That he had truly been the heartless freak behind the killing machines.

He had played me and done it well. I had honestly believed him when he said his name was Daniel. If only I had realized that it was really Blayce I was meeting for the little trysts. I could have ended this entire ordeal so long ago. 'Could you of? You enjoyed being with him so much, could you really have killed him if you had known the truth?'

I shoved the niggling thought into the dark recesses of my mind. Of course I would have been able to kill the man, he was a monster. He did not deserve to live. I don't even deserve to live because I loved the brute. I still love him.

But it's not him I love. I loved the man named Danial, not this Blayce creature. I couldn't possibly have fallen in love with this fiend, could I?

I turned sharply away from his body when Corporal Wolset approached me. "Lady Kel's waking up Sir. I just thought you might want to know."

I perked up at hearing she was coming around. It would help my spirits to be able to tease her about the little things. There was no way I could blame her for what she did to my beautiful Blayce, it was simply something that had to be done. I was just happy that the Chamber had chosen her for this task and not me.

She was watching me closely as I approached, helped along by Wolset. I knew she was carefully cataloguing everything wrong with me, if I let her continue her scrutiny of me for much longer, she would discover that my weariness was not all due to my recent exertions. Quickly I tried to distract her, "You call that mess you had on a bandage? I was picking threads out of your wound. I stopped the bleeding, at least, and cleaned it. What business did you have getting wounded in the first place?"

It worked; mentally I wiped my forehead in relief. Soon she was off talking with others about everything that had occurred while she had been out cold. I watched with a weary heart as we gathered out dead and put flame to the pyre. Then someone asked what we were going to do with the Scanra dead and Kel decided to let the stormwings have them.

I looked back at Blayce one last time as we road out of the gates. I watched his receding form until one of the immortals landed next to him. Forcing myself to look away from the scene of the man I loved being torn to pieces by the foul creature, I noticed my cousin looking at me with concern.

He then said something that would stay with me until my death, "Its hard to leave loved ones behind, isn't Neal?"


End file.
